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6-THE SEA COAST ECHO, TERCENTENNIAL EDITION, THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1999
Thomas Shields
1783-1827
From 1699 until 1803, the settlement on the west bank of the Bay of St. Louis was known- as Bay Bay St. Louis. The land had been a Spanish land grant to Constantin Tardil in 1789. Since Tardil did not occupy the site, it was awarded to Thomas Shields in 1790.
It is known that a Thomas Shields occupied it in 1800. Historians believe this was the father of the man for whom the settlement was later named, since the son was only age seven at the time.
Shields married Ellen Blanchard Ker in 1816 at Shieldsboro/Bay St. Louis. The town was known then by both names. While Shields owned a home on Front Street at the site of today’s Chess/s Art and Antiques, he spent little time there. According to the 1820 Census, Shields and his family lived in St. Tammany Parish, La. and by 1823 were residents of New Orleans.
In 1818 Shieldboro was offi-
cially designated a town by that name and remained so until 1875 when the legislature changed it to Bay St. Louis. According torAmerican State Papers, it was recorded in 1820 that Congress declined to ratify the Spanish land grant awarded to Shields.
Minor disputes over the title continued until the 1920s when the land was awarded to a resort complex. Our search failed to uncover the location of this complex. But is is known that no heirs claimed the land.
The name of Shields lives on in local descendants as well as historical references and a mini-shopping center called Shieldsboro Square. Also, during World War II, a Navy destroyer was christened Purser Shields. In his day, Shields served as Purser of the Navy in New Orleans.
Bom in Delaware, Shields joined the U.S. Navy in 1804 as a midshipman and by 1808 he was stationed in Baltimore angling for a purser job. He plied important people with letters pleading for their support.
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In a letter to Gabriel Duvall, Comptroller of the Navy, Shields cited “the unavoidable expenses which I am compelled to be at, through the highness of boarding &c, (etc.) and my inability to meet it by any other means but that arising from my slender pay as midshipman, induces me to solicit your influence in the opportunity so offered.”
In another plea: “I have heretofore studiously avoided any recurrence to the subject of promotions. It is however, My Dear Sir, grating to see juniors wearing Epaulets . Mr. Rogers who is recruiting in this station is one of those. May I not calculate on your friendship?”
His campaign succeeded. In April of 1812 his commission was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and Shields was dispatched to New Orleans to serve as purser, the only shore-based position he was to hold during his Navy career except a brief wartime sortie.
The Battle of Lake Borgne in the War of 1812 found Shields aboard ship together with Dr. R. Morrell, Surgeon of the Navy, sent by Gen. Patterson with a flag of truce to negotiate the freedom of American prisoners held on British gunboats. The British refused the request, and Shields and Morrell returned to New Orleans. On Jan. 19, 1815, Shields left the city with a few well-armed boats to join the fray in Lake Borgne. The next day he boarded a British ship and captured its 40-member crew. The following day he captured a transport boat and a 10-ton schooner and three small boats.
In 1818, Shields was summoned to Washington to “render his accounts from 1811 to 1818. It is presumed he can account for the full amount standing in lus debt of S98.514.30. The amount of his pay since March 1821 is to be deducted from this balance.”
In 1823 Shields was granted a nine-month leave of absence to go to Honduras to “pursue a claim, the proceeds of which he wanted to apply to liquidation of his accounts."
But in September 1828, the navy reported his debt at $98,417.30 even though in April 1827, Shields was given
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NAVAL BATTLE OF BAY ST. LOUIS ;
On Dec, 14,1814, five U. S. gunboats fired on a British fleet entering Lake Borgne. Their action was the last
naval defense of the U S» before the victory of General
a twelve-month leave to go to Mexico. The navy's records note “the trip to Mexico has the same purpose as the one to Honduras because of having been unable to go assay on account of his finances.”
In 1826. responding to a request for information for a Shields Memorial, R.Y. Hayne, Chairman of the Senate-Committee of Naval Affairs, wrote:
“It appears by the files of this Office that in the settlement of Mr. Shields's accounts in 1821, his own statement exhibited a balance due to the United States of $81,047.57. In this statement, however, certain errors existed and certain sums were charged by Mr. Shields which according to the rules of Settlement of this office were not allowed, and which raise the balance as stated to be $98,314.30. The difference between these two stuns is principally made up of overpayments to dead men and deserters, and of stores lost by conflagration and capture by the British during the late war. Besides these two principal items, there are rejected charges for clerk hire, travelling expenses and house rent, making in the whole, the sum of $16,395.54 for which, perhaps, though the strict rules of Law by which this office is governed, in the settlement of accounts, prohibit any allowance, Mr. Shields is entitled upon the principals of Equity to a credit. Should this sum be allowed to him, the balance against him will be reduced to $81,918.76. No other demands [exist] for credit on the part of Mr. Shields.”
The chairman also felt that some of Shields's problems could result from paying for provisions out of his own pocket.
“...during the war, public agents and disbursing officers found it extremely difficult to procure either funds or credit on their public responsibilities and unless their private means were resorted to, the public service was much inconvenienced," Hayne wrote. “At this period Mr. Shields was a man of fortune and of extensive credit, with high and chivalric feelings of patriotism, which would have led him to have used his own pecuniary resources, with the same promptitude and high minded carelessness of forms, with which he had actually hazarded his life, when he thought the interests of his country required it.
“The untarnished reputation of Mr. Shields for moral integrity forbids the suspicion that any part of the large balance against him could have accrued
from an illegal or improper diversion the public funds to his own use or emc ment. But it is highly probable t much of it may have arisen from the gleet, dishonesty, or wastefulness of thi Subordinate Agents to whom he x compelled to entrust the management his concerns ...several officers who w then serving on that station, the Purse Stewards and Agents were frequen called upon to perform Military duty a that while they were so engaged...I warehouses and stores in which pro sions and other public effects were dep ited, were left without protection and ( posed to pillage and depredation. It « not be doubted that public property tc large amount, with which Mr. Shie' was charged and is now held responsifc was thus wasted or stolen without slig est ground of imputation resting eitl upon his integrity or vigilance.”
In 1822 the Secretary of I Navy authorized a payment to Shields $1,693.10 to cover the loss “occasion by burning the public storehouse at t Bay of St Louis by order of Lt. Jon commanding the naval force of the U stationed at that point during the ini sion of the enemy in the winter of 1814
Shields died in 1827, leav his debt behind. In 1839, the navy si John K. Smith, one of his surety bon men and won a $25,000 judgment in fi eral court in Louisiana for the penalty the debt. No action was taken agai Shields’s heirs, called “utterly insolvi as was also John K. Smith.” In anotl suit in Maryland against a second bom man, George Stiles, the navy won $25,000 judgment.
Shields, who pleaded for the j of purser citing his inability to live or midshipman's pay. accumulated prop ties “ all over, including Mexico, Hone ras and South America.” according tc descendant. Why he left a large unp; debt to the U.S. Navy is not revealed available documents.
In 1842 Shields’s name was c leted from the published list of debtors.
(Sources: Historical Memoir of the ff in West Florida and Louisiana 181 1815, by Major A. LaCarriere Latour, ' Florida Press 1964; Unpublished mate als from Donald Sharp of Metairie, L including correspondence with the U. Navy and with Shields descendai Maureen Murphy Singleton of Housto Tex.).	Edith	Bac